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Group Activities |
| Food chain | Study our position within our food chain: what do we eat? What do the things we eat, eat? What do they need to live? How are we related to everything around us? |
| Plant species | Get a book on the plant species in your country and see how many you can identify. Are there species in the book you cannot find? |
| Pollution | Pollution consequences. When you go walking in the woods, have you noticed what happens to the vegetation near polluted areas? (waste or rubbish dumps). Are there any changes? Why? |
| Habitat | 1. Identify different types of habitat and think about those that you know best and are closest to you. Make a drawing or an explanatory diagram that includes the main species of animals and plants in the habitat. 2. In a park or wood, where are there the most traces of animals (footprints, remains of food, and droppings)? What happens close to areas lived in by humans? And close to polluted areas? |
| Protected natural areas | 1. Make a list of the different types of park and protected natural areas that exist in your country (national parks, regional parks, oases, refuges, natural reserves, coastal parks - protected marine areas, and city parks), and try to visit them and study how they are organised and how environmental protection is achieved in them in practical terms. 2. Nature trail - Part A. Make up a nature trail in a park you know. What components would you emphasise? Which environments should people visit? |
| Ecosystems | Identify the changes in vegetation and fauna in different areas: dry, damp, and boggy etc. Then classify the different species according to their ecosystem, and observe the co-presence of the same species in different ecosystems. |
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Projects |
| Food chain | After choosing some animal and plant samples with the same ecosystem, try to reconstruct the food chain starting from your samples. Who is the producer? Who is the primary consumer? Who is the secondary consumer? |
| Plant species | 1. In order to grow and live, plants need light and air so that they can carry out all their functions, including the extremely important function of photosynthesis. You too can observe this vital need of plants, by planting seeds (beans and lentils are fine) in 3 different cans. The first one should be placed on a windowsill, the second inside a box pierced with holes, and the third in a box which is then shut tight. What happens to the seeds? In which ones do the seedlings grow? Why? 2. We are going to create our very own small herbarium so that we can learn to classify and recognise plant species. It's really easy! All you need so as to be able to dry flowers and leaves is a press (you can even make one yourself, using two slabs of wood joined together with screws - so that the sheets containing the flowers and leaves are kept well-pressed), some sheets of kitchen paper or sheets of ordinary newspaper, and tweezers to separate the dried leaves and place them on the pages of an exercise book so you won't ruin them by touching them with your hands. It's best to collect the flowers and leaves at different times of the year, so that you'll have different species to catalogue. Then it's best to note the time and place of collection in your exercise book, as well as the name of the plant in question, of course (for this you can use a good encyclopedia or a botanical dictionary). |
| Habitat | 1. Identify different types of habitat and think about those that you know best and are closest to you. Make a drawing or an explanatory diagram that includes the main species of animals and plants in the habitat. 2. Make a terrarium. A terrarium is a small artificial environment which you can have terrestrial animals live in, just like an acquarium is for acquatic animals. You can keep frogs, toads, lizards or small mammals like mice and hamsters in it, and you need to feed them with suitable food. You can use an old acquarium or adapt old boxes or cabinets. You also need to reproduce the environment that these animals are used to living in (using stones, moss, and by including a small pond (a plastic basin will be fine). |
| Protected natural areas | Nature trail - Part B. Create your own signs to put in a park: explanatory signs at the entry to protected areas, direction indicator signs, educational signs (tables showing the typical flora and fauna of the area with explanatory drawings and texts, so that visitors can recognise the different species), and prohibition and warning signs. |
| Ecosystems | Let's make our very own nursery so we can observe how an ecosystem grows and develops at close hand. We'll take care of it every day. We'll see that birds will often visit our nursery or that small worms or insects will live in it. The worms' food is supplied directly from the substances contained in the soil, but it's a different story for the birds. If we want to get the food for them, we must follow a few simple rules and be careful to respect their habits. There are various different types of feeding trough. We can use a simple glass jar with a very big diameter so that the birds won't get trapped, or we can make a wooden feeding trough in the shape of an open drawer, placed on a pole which has a metal disc to stop predators climbing up it. Once the birds have got used to coming to the feeding trough we'll always need to keep it stocked up. If we have to go away from home we'll have to install a container that the food can flow out of gradually. |
